Monday, March 25, 2013

Foreword: While I pull the final chapters of The Book together, I'll re-post once again. This one drew more hits than any I've written to date. It still makes me think about how we view a child's missteps. See you soon.

I was talking with my oldest son
about someone I know who spills a lot.

“Spills a lot?” He asked.

“Some people trip. She spills.”

It was meant to be a throwaway, a relatable comment to which most
people would respond: "I lose stuff,” or, “I drop things,” etc. But my son
was thoughtful. “When I’m a parent, I’m going to make sure the one thing I do
when my kid spills a drink is say, ‘no big deal.’”

When
teenagers tell you they’ll let their kids hang around with anyone they want, or
stay out until they feel like coming home, you shrug. When an adult child
starts a sentence with, “When I’m a parent…” you brace.

Then you personalize.

I rummaged through my mental archives,
trying to recall the incident(s) which led to my son's pledge to his future
child.

I
said, “How often were we that upset over a spilled drink?”
“You weren’t,” he said, “But parents do it all the time. Scold kids for doing
things they didn’t want to do in the first place. Nobody wants to spill a
drink. It isn’t in anyone’s nature towantto spillanything.
When it happens to my kid, I’m not going to punish him or her. I’ll be
sympathetic.”

First, I smiled in my heart at the thought of my son being that
kind of parent. Then I rummaged through my shoebox
again until the subject changed.

It
was timely insight, because the following night, as he hurried to get to a
baseball function, my younger son backed into my car. I saw the whole thing.
Saw him leap from the car and run up the stairs to the house, where I waited. He was holding his head, his eyes were like quarters. “I hit your car,” he said, “I
am so sorry.”

“Let me take a look,” I said.

My car looked like it had coughed up its insides through the
headlight.
"Holy (bad word here). You certainly did,” I said.

“I’ll pay for it,” said my financially dependent child.

“No, but thank you,” I said. “Go do your dinner thing. We’ll
talk about it later.”

“I’ll give you my car,” he said.

I hugged him and said, “I wish I didn’t know how you feel right
now, but I do.”

Nobody wants to spill a drink.

I
made him leave, grateful that he wasn’t hurt, grateful that this had occurred
in our driveway and not in a busy parking lot, and, of course, grateful that I
wasn't standing in front of the fender when he backed up.

Someday
my son will probably have a child who drives into something. He won’t remember
the lecture or punishment I might have come up with when it happened to him.
But he will remember how he felt when his mistake created a loss for someone
else. And maybe when his child is standing there holding his head, with eyes
like quarters, waiting for the reaction that still won’t be as bad as the way
he already feels, my son will offer a hug instead of something less useful.

It was the day before my birthday, a day my children find
tedious because I already have everything I can use. And yet, smashed fender
and all, didn’t both Sam and I wind up with something we can both use, thanks
to a little gift of insight from Drew:

Thursday, March 7, 2013

SPECIAL NOTICE: For maximum enjoyment, this post will require you to know who Lucas McCain is.

Like
everyone, I've heard adages and
expressions in my life that are hard to forget for a couple of reasons: either they were told to me when I didn't know
from it, or, they were told to me by a person in their late eighties with
weathered skin and piercing eyes who
didn't get that far by being a nitwit.

Here's
one:

For
balance, every woman needs eight friends who are more or less than she is in each of these four categories: wealth,
looks, brains and popularity.

False. I need loyal, supportive and honest friends no matter what they have in the bank or who thinks they are hilarious and I can get by with fewer than eight.

Here's
another:

Your
first serious celebrity crush(es) will predict things about your most serious
life relationship.

That one's true.

I
was always embarrassed to admit my crushes
- nobody got it. Danny over Keith? George over Paul? Really? Why? It all makes sense now.

I'll
start with the Rifleman.

While
all the other girls thought Mark McCain was dreamy with those soulful eyes and the way he said
"Paw," I developed a stubborn crush on Lucas, the squinty, tough,
wise, gritty rifleman who solved problems with his rifle and asked questions
later.

There
was not a single thing about him that a real woman couldn't change, I thought. And
he had been left to both mother and
father Mark, even with a rattlesnake in his sleeping bag. I wanted to make it
all better for the tough/tender Lucas.

I
never went for the Davy Jones accent, I went for the Michael Nesmith eyes which
I imagined smoldering with inspiration for a ballad called, simply, "Joanne"
"Susan". I wanted to look into eyes like that forever.

Unlike
everyone else at the bus stop, I never really liked Mick or Paul. I liked Gary
Puckett because even if you saw less of him in magazines, his songs were always about seducing women. Did no one ever teach me the facts of life? No. And there was so much I had to
learn. I wanted Gary to answer a few questions.

I
never liked dumbbell Keith Partridge, but the conniving Danny. I wanted
someone too savvy to
be outsmarted by the average Joe.

I
didn't like jaded John or puppy Paul, I liked serious George who traded
profile for pride.

And even if he wore the same khakis and white shirt every day, year in and out on the island, I liked the professor with a soul - an everybody I would have
to keep everybody away from.

I
never went for the Hugh Grant smirk but the David Letterman wit. I wanted that
sharp take on the ridiculous.

I
didn't know I was shopping for so many things or even when I found them, until one day in November, 1983,
when I heard the sound of my future husband's voice, reached for the
perfume, fluffed up my hair and skulked around until he noticed me.

And after all
those crushes, I knew this was no somebody. This man, whose last name I was doodling next to my own on legal pads in meetings, was an everybody

Mr. and Mrs. Everybody

Twenty-eight
years and four children later, here we are,
still with the same last name, still making plans for the things we'll do years from now.

One
of my favorite friends passed along this sentiment about marrying
the love of her life: I think
about what might never have been, and I cherish every single day.That one's true. There is no better way to describe the joy
at having found, and remained with the most serious love of your life. I
found and remained with all of them.

Monday, March 4, 2013

Every
once in a while, I tell my children, "Don't be like me." I say it
about things I've had to improve or change in my life: my driving, my attention
span, my controlling tendencies but I also say it to be funny. Now, after seeing three of
our four children operate in their independent
lives, I'm happy to report they are not like me in the ways they
shouldn't be. And I am happy to report that I am now like them, and other twenty-somethings, in a way I
needed to be.

I
thought about this at Petco recently where I went to pick up extra rubber golf balls
for Gus and found myself drawn to the fish
"department"- the corner kept
dark but for neon details and designs near the tanks. Here, in this fish nightclub,
the predatory fish are separated from
the community type. I walked around looking at the piranhas and the angels, and
thought about two things: how would we know if fish ever got depressed, and what
the hell was wrong with all of us in the 1980's.

Soon
after I left college in the 80's, I took my first serious job in the financial
services industry. I entered the workplace like the rod-straight, silk and
pearls Anne Wells in Valley of the Dolls, shocked to observe a community so jaded
by self-interest that there was actually an acronym for it. In my first
orientation session, the trainer wrote it on the board.

"Whatever
you do," she said, underlining it several times, "CYA."

"CYA?"
I asked.

She
looked at me for a few seconds. "Cover your ass," she said.
"Don't think someone's going to accept blame for a mistake if they can
blame you." She underlined it again.
"CYA."

Wasn't
that helpful? I thought so.

Competition
in the workplace was never, as it is today, a constructive force. And the word to describe the atmosphere was
not "culture" as it is today, but "climate" - fitting for
those cold, "me first" and "outta my way" places where hopeful
twenties stalked up the corporate ladder, pretending to like you if you were
useful, staring at their shoes in elevators if you weren't. If you did find anyone
in the workplace who was truly happy for
you when you were promoted, or given a raise or awarded more responsibility, it was because you were on track to become
their supervisor, or because they were a temp. Ideas weren't shared, mistakes
weren't admitted unless they were someone else's, ropes weren't thrown and
people were shameless in their attempts to endear themselves to superiors.

Despite
the trainer's guidance, I was always the surprised , naive "Huh?" one
who had to learn through a
"friend" that I'd been thrown
under the bus because I lacked the instinct to know it myself. I saw examples of duplicity all the time, and
yet, when it was hinted in a meeting by a co-worker that I hadn't done my job,
or when a confidential remark shared with a co-worker was leaked, I was still
surprised. "Huh?"

I
learned.

It
wasn't easy, but I learned how to hide
my satisfaction when someone else did poorly,
or hide my jealousy when someone else did well. There were few hurt feelings. Nobody expected the support of their peers because
nobody trusted their peers. We were angels and piranhas living in the same tank.

I
didn't even want to be like me.

Change
is good.

Today,
the high-achieving twenty-somethings I know (including my children and their friends)
are struggling in an equally competitive
employment climate to find and keep
their jobs. But while they are facing the same competitive factors that we did
back in the hey day, they employ different strategies; they don't leave piles of screwed over co-workers in their wake as they navigate competitive
waters, they stay late and take on more. They don't go out for drinks to
find out incriminating stuff that they're not supposed to know, they go out to
commiserate, share stories, and support each other. They don't compete with
each other as much as they compete with themselves.

Bullpen floor plans allow co-workers proximity to one another and promote group
think and camaraderie. Today, our twenties in their more "cultured" workplace
don't sabotage talent, they share it. And when a twenties describes being shown up, singled out, or picked on,
it's rarely by a contemporary, but more likely
a boss or co-worker who steeped in a CYA 80's workplace.

Because
it was one fish eat fish world out there in those 80's.

Whether
old competitive behaviors are conditioned or innate, they are worth shedding. But
it's not easy. As counter-intuitive as it once was to compete with my peers, it was tough to learn not to.
Tough not to feel jealous when others achieved what I wanted. Tough to offer congratulations to those as
deserving as I was.

And
then I started writing - a solitary art which requires heart and competitive spirit in a way that can drive improvement, keep you current and advance
your craft, or, make you resent those who
pave the way while you stand in your own way,
wondering "why not me?"

I didn't need isolation. I needed community.

So I switched tanks, joining online writer sites and blogger communities,
signing up for work shops, attending conferences, forming a writer's group. I
began to read other writers - the published ones - heartened to remember that they were once
where I was. And I bolstered the unpublished
ones, cheering their successes and hoping to soften failures or missteps with words of "I've been there."

With
a lot of remedial training, I have become a community fish again.

And now, I have one more thing in common with my very nice
children, who are all more relaxed about letting someone else be in charge, who
all drive safely, who are all excellent at paying attention, and who are all splashing
happily about with the other angel fish.

Thank
you all twenty-somethings for showing me your tank. I like what you've done with it. I think I'll stay.